San Antonio—A global push is underway to rid the environment of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)—or at least reduce human exposure routes such as drinking water—because of growing evidence of their toxicity. And analytical chemists are energized about detecting and quantifying the useful but troublesome class of synthetic chemicals.
Meeting that measurement need was a major topic of conversation and commerce at Pittcon, an annual instrumentation and analytical science conference held last week in San Antonio. Multiple instrument makers and vendors of laboratory supplies launched PFAS-related products at the show or highlighted existing ones, and they said attendees were eager to hear more.
The industry has focused in recent years on making tools and methods more sensitive, down to parts-per-trillion limits of detection, said Ethan Hain, a product coordinator at the instrument maker Shimadzu. Hain specializes in liquid chromatography paired with mass spectrometry (LC/MS), the basis of the analytical methods that most regulations require for testing PFAS in drinking water, wastewater, and soil.
Pittcon includes an exposition, scientific talks, and social events (shown) for analytical scientists. Credit:
Craig Bettenhausen/C&EN
Along with more-powerful instruments, Hain said, analyte-concentration techniques such as solid-phase extraction let chemists sniff out PFAS at concentrations that seemed out of reach just a few years ago. In that family of methods, the PFAS are stripped from a water sample by passing it through a weak anion-exchange polymer or other material. A subsequent wash with a specialized solvent pulls the PFAS back out in a much smaller volume, making them easier to measure.
Though the global trend is toward tighter control of PFAS in the environment, Hain said he and his peers are carefully watching a proposed loosening of US regulations. “If there’s not a regulation around it, people aren’t going to invest in an instrument,” he pointed out. Long term, though, the instrumentation industry expects environmental regulations to tighten and be joined by more rules for food, drinks, and personal care products.
Before scientists can reliably quantify the PFAS in a sample, they must eliminate PFAS in their workflow, emphasized Bradley VanMiddlesworth, an analytical scientist at the sample-prep automation firm ePrep. Some plastic pipette tips are made using a PFAS-based mold-release agent, he said. Caps, septa, and tubing all must be confirmed PFAS-free, VanMiddlesworth said, and washed with alkaline acetone or methanol between samples.
A sales representative at the lab supplier Trajan confirmed that notion, saying the firm has seen a sharp increase in sales of PFAS-free laboratory consumables. Because many PFAS polymers are robust, chemically inert, and flexible, they were used extensively in analytical equipment for years.
Analytical labs are figuring it out, VanMiddlesworth said. For example, the city of Sugar Land, Texas, was consistently seeing PFAS levels higher than 600 parts per trillion in drinking water, well above what’s considered safe. He worked with lab technicians to implement better washing protocols, and the results fell to below the level of detection. The change suggests that PFAS were already present in the lab or were building up over time. “PFAS is such a difficult analyte to clean up,” he said.
Now that parts-per-trillion detection of PFAS is possible, more chemists are getting set up to do the benchwork. Mario Luis, a formulation chemist at Absolute Standards, a maker of analytical reference standards, said demand for PFAS standards is accelerating. Labs, which use the standards to calibrate equipment and verify substance identifications, are looking for both single-component samples and custom blends for detailed composition analysis.
As if to underscore the point, while Luis was speaking with C&EN at the firm’s Pittcon booth, a chemist approached and asked for its PFAS catalog. “A lot more labs are getting into it,” Luis said.
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